Robinson's first novel, Housekeeping (1980), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, is a work of remarkable metaphoric richness, full of American literary allusion. The novel is set in a small western town situated on the edge of a lake and tells the story of three generations of women, coping in various ways with the task of going on despite traumatic losses.

Robinson's The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (1998) is contrarian in method and spirit, as she states in her Introduction. Of the included essays, McGuffey and the Abolitionists and Puritans and Prigs cover topics that surface in Gilead.

Gloria Naylor's novel The Women of Brewster Place (1989) follows the lives of seven women living in Brewster Place, a ghetto housing project in a northern U.S. city. The poignancy of these women's lives and their hopes and challenges clearly...